The Case Against Perfection

by Harry on November 23, 2007

Until Brian’s postsaboutcloning, I hadn’t thought much about the various technologies available for choosing how children will turn out, and insofar as I had my instincts were conservative, but my assumptions libertarian. That is, my own reaction to such technologies was that they should not be used, but I didn’t have any real reasons for thinking that, so I assumed that some general presumption in favour of liberty decided in favour of permitting them. My views have changed, or perhaps just solidified, since then, to a point that I am comfortably perfectionist in Raz’s sense and conservative in Cohen’s sense, and by the time I read The Case Against Perfection(UK) I was already predisposed to agree with Michael Sandel’s skepticism. I’ve now used the book in a couple of classes, and it works brilliantly with students; Sandel can be a terrific writer, as he is here, and he covers a lot of ground accessibly. There’s even a chapter offering a theory of the value of sport which may or may not be correct but explains, to my satisfaction, why I find 20-20 so dreary. (This last thing is a bit difficult to explain to students without a 2-hour session explaining how cricket works, lucky things).

Sandel doesn’t explicitly advocate a prohibition on enhancement technologies, such as human growth hormone, use of embryo selection to choose the sex of a baby, or possible future genetic interventions to enhance memory or muscle development. Officially he is just attempting to articulate the “source of our unease” with such developments, which he rightly thinks cannot be accounted for in the language of rights or autonomy. It’s hard to read it without thinking that he does, nevertheless, want a prohibition, at least if it can be enforced feasibly (possibly difficult, given that he has no objection to the use of some very similar technologies to address bona fide health conditions). So it might be a bit frustrating if you are looking for a straightforward case for prohibition. But Sandel tries to get beyond the “wisdom of repugnance” and articulate actual reasons for rejecting enhancement technologies, and I think he at least succeeds in offering reasons that pass secular muster.

What’s the argument? The key idea is that of giftedness; his central fear is that the use of these technologies will end up undermining our appreciation of the role of giftedness in the social matrix and in our own individual lives. The idea is familiar from Rawls (and from Christianity, of course): what talents we are born with and how valuable they are in our social environment is an arbitrary matter, for which we cannot take any credit. Developing and exercising those talents, of course, is up to us, but even that will be partly down to the way that we are raised and the norms that influence us.

Enhancement technologies threaten the idea of giftedness not because it is any more rational to think of ourselves as deserving credit for our talents if they were designed by our parents rather than given by nature, but for two other reasons. But widespread availability technological intervention engenders a tendency to see characteristics that once were “given” as matters of someone’s choice. Think of the change in attitudes to children with Down Syndrome; it really is the case in most rich countries where abortion is legal that having a child with Down Syndrome is usually a matter of choice, even if that choice was merely the choice not to have amnio, or, having had amnio, not to have an abortion. It is not that one will come to see one’s own talents as one’s own responsibility but that one will come to see others talents (or lack of them) as someone’s responsibility.

Why does giftedness matter so much? Because “if the genetic revolution erodes our appreciation for the gifted character of human powers and achievements, it will transform three key features of our moral landscape: humility, responsibility, and solidarity”. And the greatest of these, it seems, is solidarity (Sandel doesn’t say that, but I think it’s a fair reading).

How are these three values affected? Well, as Sandel says, “parenthood is a school in humility”. Lacking the ability to write scripts for, or even cast, our children, helps us to accept the role that fortune has played and continues to play in our own lives; it teaches us that we are inevitably limited in our attempts to master the world. Responsibility, by contrast, explodes with the availability of enhancement, because suddenly someone is responsible for what talent any individual has, and we even have some responsibility for our own talents/defects in so far as we could deploy available technologies to address them even in adulthood (my favourite example concerns my yellow and crooked teeth, which I could turn into gleaming white beauties at a cost, and consciously choose not to). The erosion of humility and explosion of responsibility in turn undermine our sense that we are, with others, part of a community of shared fate.

This all seems about right to me – he succeeds, in other words, in articulating some of the sources of my unease, albeit that the unease was already post- rather than pre-theoretical. What he has succeeded in doing is placing important value considerations on the table and showing with some precision how they are affected by the phenomena under investigation – one of the key tasks of political philosophy. But this falls a long way short of showing that enhancement technologies should be prohibited, or even showing how they should be regulated if they are to be permitted. Suppose we learned how to raise IQs (or multiple intelligences) of those in the lower part of the distribution; it would improve their lives considerably, in our social environment, if we did this without simultaneously raising the IQs of other, more advantaged, people. This might indeed undermine solidarity to some extent, but the direct benefit to the less advantaged would be worth it. Or suppose (and I heard this argument from one of those transhumanists, second hand via colleague) that massive strides in longevity were needed in order for it to make sense for individuals to seek out the distant habitable planets we need to save humanity at a certain point; then, presumably, that would weigh heavily in favour of allowing use of the relevant technologies.

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Sorry Harry, this is nonsense. Giftedness is a crock: all phenotypic traits are the product of social choices of various kinds. A cloned being is more or less a gift than any other child. There is absolutely no reason to think that cloning gives us more control over these traits than we already possess.

Sorry Neil, but cloning’s not the topic, rather enhancement technologies (contrary to the impression given by my opening, I realise now). These do (or would) give us more, direct and intentional, control over traits (as I understand it) than we currently have, even though what you say is certainly true, that all traits arise indirectly from social choices. Or am I misunderstanding you?

Not only is it nonsense, it’s also highly limiting. As if a sportsman/woman (to take one example) was defined by nothing else but his/her capacity for a unique activity.
Another question is: does anybody know of a case where medical or scientific research has been durably stopped by societal choice?

The “gift” concept seems needlessly overblown to me. However, randomness seems as if it should be a motivation for solidarity, and even greater tendency to look for who to blame than exists already is a depressing though. But my sense is that so many people resist the idea of randomness in their lives — the ubiquitousness of the “everything happens for a reason” tag line — that I’m not sure that it does motivate much of whatever sense of solidarity there is.

_does anybody know of a case where medical or scientific research has been durably stopped by societal choice?_

IIRC, the commissioning of murder to secure cadavers in 19th century Scotland was successfully stopped, and there seem to be fewer medical experiments on concentration camp inmates than there were immediately pre-1945. But perhaps you don’t count those cases as research durably stopped by societal choice?

Interesting post Harry, with some predictably depressing responses. So mcd contradicts you on families and humility. But on what basis? You were admirably clear about what the source of the humbling experience is, and, from my own experience of parenting, I concur.

More generally, I think the negative commenters miss the point, which is even if we can’t (and perhaps have no right to) stop these technologies, then will permanently change the meaning of what it is to be human and in the world, and this change will involve both gain _and loss_, the _loss_ partly because it makes a perspective and some valuable ways of living unavailable to us. Think of the photograph, the motor car, the tv, and the internet. Great technologies all (which I use every day and wouldn’t be without) but it is silly to pretend that their adoption hasn’t involved such loss.

(Sure you can opt not to have a tv (or whatever) but being a tv-less person in a world where tvs are universally available is very different from being a person in a world where they don’t exist.)

Will this change? I mean, kids will still have minds of their own even with “human growth hormone, use of embryo selection to choose the sex of a baby, or possible future genetic interventions to enhance memory or muscle development.” My mother wanted three kids and got three kids, thanks to modern contraceptive technologies, but we still all went our own ways.

Enhanced memory and muscle development would I say, if anything, make it easier for kids to rebel.

And may there not be an increase in humility, as the ultra-smart people are not so uncommon and therefore are more likely to run up against each other?

As for Responsibility – there are beliefs that indicate one is responsible for everything, for example the idea that people can cure themselves of things like cancer by positive thinking often turns itself into the idea that if you have cancer it’s your fault for not thinking positively enough. Or the idea that earthquakes, volcanoes, etc, are the result of God’s disfavour because people have not been praying enough. How do cultures with those expanded senses of responsbility compare to cultures with a more fatalistic approach to life?

in turn undermine our sense that we are, with others, part of a community of shared fate

I don’t follow this logic. How would possible genetic interventions to enhance memory or muscle development change our sense that we are part of a community of shared fate? People already differ widely in memory or muscle development. If people differ less widely due to genetic enhancement, wouldn’t that increase solidarity?

Plus there are all the other normal things that remind us we are part of a shared community, like the weather, and earthquakes, and epidemics, and global warming. (Well, maybe global warming isn’t normal, but you get the idea). How would genetic enhancements change any of that?

I haven’t read the book, but I heard him talk about this stuff a couple of weeks ago. I guess he may have tapped in to the source of some people’s unease, but I don’t think many in the audience were really convinced.

I don’t in other areas of life deliberately expose myself to risk in order to be ‘open to the unbidden’. It generally seems perfectly acceptable to take steps to increase the likelihood of desirable outcomes and I don’t see why that should be different with children (e.g. not smoking/drinking during pregnancy) without undermining the unconditional love we will then form for those children, however they turn out.

Suppose we learned how to raise IQs (or multiple intelligences) of those in the lower part of the distribution; it would improve their lives considerably, in our social environment, if we did this without simultaneously raising the IQs of other, more advantaged, people. This might indeed undermine solidarity to some extent, but the direct benefit to the less advantaged would be worth it.

Increased intelligence makes you happier? I highly doubt that, indeed there’s a case to be made that the opposite might be true. It improves your life? Only by certain standards which are definitely not shared by everyone. And if you raised the IQ of all those in the lower part of the distribution, who would fulfill the functions they are currently fulfilling? (Note, I’m not saying that all those doing jobs requiring less intelligence are of lower intelligence, there are obviously many other factors in play.)

Then there is the very probable danger that such techniques would be taken advantage of primarily by those who could afford and I don’t see any legal way of forbidding them to do just that. Alternatively, the thought of governments mandating intelligence screening and artificial raising of IQ gives me the shivers – think of China’s “one child policy”, which is problematic in itself, turned into a “one intelligent child policy”.

Society should rather focus on making sure that those in the lower part of the distribution are safeguarded against exploitation.

Harry, quite right. In my passion I substituted cloning for enhancement. If you correct the error, the comment is still absolutely right. I have written a book on this; so have better biologists and philosophers than me. Sadly, it seems impossible to fight the tide which swamps even talented philosophers like you.

I agree with Sandel, to the extent that I understand his uneasiness. My worry is about our increased ability to manipulate other beings (in this case, unborn children). My question is (for the objectors): for all those who are in favor of (heavily) manipulating the lives of children, what are you views on parent coercion post-birth? I ask because most people are wary of parents have too much control over the lives of their children in the course of raising them. Clayton, for example, thinks it’s illegitimate for parents to force their own particular conception of the good life on their children (be it a religious view, or what have you). He also thinks that society itself can’t manipulate children solely for it’s own aims (ie, to create children with better work ethics for the economy, or something along those lines). Everyone is in uproar when a parent indoctrinates her child, because they (rightly) see that child deserves to have some individual autonomy. Now, selecting for physical traits, you say, is different. Well, what do you think about the parent who sends her child to boot camp and constantly humiliates her because she thinks the child is too fat? Isn’t the parent only trying to influence a physical trait of her child? The goal is the same, but the means are different, you may say. Well, think about this possibility with the same goal but different means. Let’s say there was a way to genetically select a person’s propensity for religious belief. Would it be more legitimate for a parent to select for religion genetically than waiting to indoctrinate the child post-birth? I don’t see how. It’s the same uneasiness, it just doesn’t look the same yet. But if technology advances (which it always does), wouldn’t this just be an extention of the sort of control that we don’t want parents to have?

I use that to illustrate my uneasiness, and the importance of giftedness and arbitrariness, but my mind is undecided on whether or not to prohibit. I’m uneasy, certainly, and I share Cohen’s fear that what we want now may be acceptable, but it may lead to future generations starting unacceptable practices: The problem that we face is not, “where shall we (now) draw the line?”, but “if we draw the line here, where will they, or, for that matter, we, later, draw the line, given what our desires and tolerances have come to be?” (from the paper Harry linked)

We humans, we eukaryotes, we life forms have been involved in a universal eugenic project from the beginning. When we choose a mate, when we raise a child, we are, however obliquely, selecting for a superman. Traditional methods are a bit of a crapshoot, though. We probably have more blondes than we did before the last ice age, but our brains seem much the same.

Each generation inherits more than the last, not so much in terms of genes as in material and intellectual wealth. My inheritance includes my parents’ attention, their books and records, their income streams, and quite a bit of whatever they inherited as well.

Speaking as a Californian, one of the differences between my generation and the next is that my education at Berkeley, one of the best universities in the world, was nearly free when I attended but now saddles most graduates with decades of debt.

If we want to advance the capabilities of the next generation, and the one after that, we need to cultivate our garden, to provide the infrastructure, to make sure that every seed falls into fertile soil.

Do we really have to worry about the morality of a postulated enhancement which we not only don’t know how to do but can’t agree whether or how or to what extent it’s even possible? When the terms of debate themselves are so bitterly disputed? Other measures could be sooner fruitful.

Jeez, should I have told my brother not to marry another blue-eyed blond, and not to father a second son? Would she have done better visiting a high-end sperm bank, treating herself to some Nobelist’s DNA, and foregoing my brother’s fathering skills?

We ought to stop assuming that our society is adequate, has already overcome racism and sexism, and does a reasonably good job of taking care of everybody, if we want progress or starfarers in our great-grandchildren’s artificially extended lifetimes.

Neil — you probably know then that I am not widely read in bioethics, and am willing to learn more. One thing I liked about Sandel’s book was the challenge to the broad-seep libertarianism and pro-technology outlook that seems, to me, to pervade the bioethics I have read, and seems mostly to be challenged either by insult (which is what Kass does) or not at all. You’re being way too shy — tell us what your book is and I, at least, will read it.

Lindsey – I am indoctrinating my child every day and I don’t see what’s wrong with some forms of it. She has a cold so I told her not to wipe her nose on her sleeve, but use a tissue. Did I point out that this was a culturally relativist view and not a universally valid moral norm? Funnily enough, no. And for anyone whose notion of the good life involves wiping their nose on their sleeves – I’d rather avoid you.

I think the biggest worry of many people is that use of genetic enhancement for children is going to be the preserve of those who are more affluent/educated already and so further increase social inequality. And even for the most aspirant middle classes, there is going to be the worry of the rachet effect: you have now not just got to be eating healthily in pregnancy and using flash cards from the womb and send your child to the best possible school, but add in this as well.

I haven’t read Sandel’s book, but the obvious question is why his arguments don’t also tell against medical interventions and any attempts whatever to raise children to have desirable traits (see #13).

Wouldn’t we have a stronger sense of ‘fortune,’ and greater solidarity, if we just left all our injuries and diseases untreated? If you broke a bone, you’d limp for the rest of your life rather than being able to choose to have it mended. Wouldn’t that make us more humble? Medicine has extended the realm of responsibility and reduced that of luck, but I don’t see anything at all bad about that.

And let’s say you can raise a child to be more compassionate than she would otherwise be, i.e. than her inborn nature alone would make her. That too is an extension of responsibility over luck, but is that any reason not to do it? (Would Clayton cited in #13 object?)

Finally — an old example of Jonathan Glover’s — if we could use genetic engineering to make people more compassionate, would that be objectionable? It would if anything create more solidarity.

(Funny that Harry says a perfectionist view supports skepticism about genetic enhancement. I would have thought most versions of perfectionism would be enthusiastic.)

Clayton, for example, thinks it’s illegitimate for parents to force their own particular conception of the good life on their children (be it a religious view, or what have you).

How does a parent avoid “forcing” their own particular conception of the good life on their children? My parents think a good life includes:
– marrying someone of good character
– living in a city with lots of intellectual stuff going on
– being atheist.

My brothers and I didn’t get a chance to pick living in the country, being the children of people who were only obsessed with money, or being the children of religious fanatics. Should my parents have divorced, remarried badly, moved around the country, changed religions on a regular basis, etc, in order to avoid “forcing” their conception of the good life on their kids? Would not that equally have involved “forcing” their own idea that they should not force their conception of the good life on their kids, as the life they did live?

He also thinks that society itself can’t manipulate children solely for it’s own aims

This appears logically true, as a society does not have aims, and therefore logically cannot manipulate children for them.

Individuals in a society may indeed have aims, and if a certain individual has enough power then they can try to manipulate all the children in that society for that person’s own aims. Whether they will achieve their intended aim is entirely another question. Children have minds of their own.

Well, what do you think about the parent who sends her child to boot camp and constantly humiliates her because she thinks the child is too fat? Isn’t the parent only trying to influence a physical trait of her child? The goal is the same, but the means are different, you may say.

Well what do you think about my parents who:
– breastfeed based on the medical advice of the time that “breast is best”
– consented to medical staff giving me and my brothers’ vaccinations
– unintentionally dealt with my dyspraxia by teaching me how to jump, hop, skip, etc (I was only diagnosed with dyspraxia at age 14, before then my mother would lie to the Plunket nurse and say I was achieving all the age-approrpriate physical skills and then her and Dad would figure out how to teach them to me.)
– dragged/dispatched me off to speech therapy and corrected my prononciation as much as possible despite my insistance as a pre-schooler that there was nothing wrong with my speech.

My parents never spanked us, never hit us, never called us stupid or slow, but they definitely tried to influence how we turned out physically. I am profoundly grateful that my parents put as much effort into teaching me physical skills as they did. Means do matter.

Let’s say there was a way to genetically select a person’s propensity for religious belief. Would it be more legitimate for a parent to select for religion genetically than waiting to indoctrinate the child post-birth?

Well there already is a way to genetically seelct a person’s propensity for religious belief. Marry a person who is strongly of whatever faith you want your children to be. For extra points, marry a person whose biological parents and grandparents are also of whatever faith you want your children to be. This gives you a double whammy:
– if there is a genetic influence he’s likely to have it.
– you get a really good cultural package backing up your choice.

Yet I still think it is perfectly legitimate for people to marry whomever they want.

Children should not be abused. Parents should have no more power over adult children than unrelated citizens. But parents inevitably and unavoidably make choices that deeply affect their children genes and life choices.

Think of the change in attitudes to children with Down Syndrome; it really is the case in most rich countries where abortion is legal that having a child with Down Syndrome is usually a matter of choice, even if that choice was merely the choice not to have amnio, or, having had amnio, not to have an abortion.It is not that one will come to see one’s own talents as one’s own responsibility but that one will come to see others talents (or lack of them) as someone’s responsibility.

This would still be true at a social/public policy level if we passed a law banning amnio tests. The responsibility would be shifted from parents to government and the public generally, but it would still be the case that a human decision resulted in an increased number of Down syndrome births. Once the technology is known, we cannot choose not to take responsibility–we can only take responsibility by applying it or take responsibility by not applying it.

In fact, that’s true even before the technology is discovered–even if we now took Sandel’s argument seriously and redirected resources away researching this sort of thing (which I’m not sure anyone is advocating) so that such technologies would never be discovered, this too would be a choice we have responsibility for.

It is like those old sci fi stories in which robots make human labor obsolete but the government creates make-work boondoggles to keep everyone busy to avoid revolution. It reduces everyone to the status of hamsters on exercise wheels. The revulsion readers of such tales feel is both simpler and more visceral than the revulsion one feels at the loss of “giftedness”.

Also–it seems odd to think of uncontrolled biology as the primary source of unpredictable human achievements. Human minds and the devices we supplement them with are Turing complete and therefore cannot be predicted by themselves. (See the diagonalization–if I predict you predict I will do something, I’ll do something else.) The promise of genetics is not to solidify human certainty but to expand human possibility.

As to lindsey’s question, I think that’s a distinction worth making–coercions that increase the possibilities available to the child–like education or genetic enhancement of IQ–are acceptable, those that decrease them–like indoctrination or genetic determination of belief–are unacceptable.

Let me clarify. First, I wasn’t citing Clayton from any personal enthusiasm for his somewhat demanding parental views (ask Harry if you don’t believe me). I cited him because many of the same people who jump on the tech train are also avid supporters of protecting children from the tyranny of controlling parents (maybe my anecdotal experience of this doesn’t hold for everyone out there). The point is, and it’s a point that I do agree with Clayton about, that there is a big difference between influencing other people and illegitimately coercing them to conform to your own conception of the good. Obviously parents will affect the lives of their children, if only in virtue of being their caregivers. If I’m a swimming enthusiast, I will very likely put my kids in swim lessons. What I can’t and shouldn’t do, however, is force them to be on a swim team or block them from pursuing other recreation activities solely because I think they should be swimmers. Genetic manipulation is heading down the illegtimate path in so far as it prevents people from making important decisions about the course of their lives and what they consider to be a good life. If I decide to believe in God, it’s better that my chioce was mine to make and not indoctrinated into me by my parents (though, their influnence could be a factor without robbing me of a genuine choice). In the same way, it’s better to choose to believe than believe because my parents genetically selected me to. There are legitimate and illegitimate ways to wield your power, and of course the distinction gets messy, but there is a difference. The point is, genetic selection offers even more ways for parents to manipulate their children then they already do. Maybe that doesn’t bother you, but it bothers me (hence the uneasiness). The question is, who should decided what you consider a good life to be? Your parents, the government, or yourself? To the extent that genetic manipulation shifts the choice even more away from the person into the hands of their parents or the society they’re born into, it makes me uneasy. Of course we can’t escape outside influence, but should we promote technology that turns influence into determining fators?

As to lindsey’s question, I think that’s a distinction worth making—coercions that increase the possibilities available to the child—like education or genetic enhancement of IQ—are acceptable, those that decrease them—like indoctrination or genetic determination of belief—are unacceptable.

Didn’t see this before I responded. But I agree, thanks for the distinction (I was being sloppy, sorry).

The question is, who should decided what you consider a good life to be? Your parents, the government, or yourself?

However, there is no evidence that controlling someone’s genes will therefore control their mind and therefore control what they decide a good life will be, bar extreme interventions where you knock out all intelligence and thus have a kid who can’t think in the first place. I don’t think many parents would choose a mindless drooling thing though.

People change their minds too frequently for our decisions to be controlled by our genes. For example, the spread of Christainity amongst the Maori after first European contact happened in two or three generations, way too fast for it to be the result of genetic selection.

Controlling someone’s genes may *affect* what they decide. But then so does deciding to raise your kids in the city or in the country. Or raise them in one nation or another. And the direction of the influence may be the opposite to what the choosers intended.

Tracy,
That’s as of our current technology. What if we could?? Or, more likely, what if people selected certain traits (like being a really fast runner) and combined it with coercion later down the road? Maybe the genetic selection part wouldn’t completely determine, but it could be a dangerous extension of parental control. The fact that so many parents already illegitimately control their children feeds my fear that this sort of technology will just give them greater power to do so. That’s all I was trying to say. I didn’t say that warranted an argument for prohibition, it just explains my wariness. But I’ll leave it at that, so the discussion can get back on track. Sorry. It was just a thought, didn’t mean to get off topic.

Another question is: does anybody know of a case where medical or scientific research has been durably stopped by societal choice?

Chemical warfare, perhaps? There’s been plenty of work done on chemical defence, but the last major breakthrough in chemical weapons was the discovery of the organophosphate acetylcholinesterase inhibitors in the 1930s. There haven’t been any new agents discovered since the V-agents were created at Porton Down in the 1950s.

This is a question people have been debating since the publication of “Brave New World”. And possibly before.

Every single SF author I have read has come out against controlling children’s mind, regardless of what technology they picked, which has ranged from sleep-teaching to drugs-in-the-water to TV shows to genetic manipulation.

I think the ethics of the question of whether we should control people’s minds has been settled as a “no” in as about a settled way as such a thing can get.

In the case of genetic selection, I don’t know how you would use it to control people’s decisions, bar the extreme use of knocking out all intelligence.

Or, more likely, what if people selected certain traits (like being a really fast runner) and combined it with coercion later down the road?

How would that be different from trying to coerce a child into being a really fast runner without genetic manipulation in the first place?

Not to mention that we already have human growth hormone and anabolic steroids, as well the simple but effective technology of intensive training which has always been available (as has selective breeding, as Tracy has pointed out). I’m often troubled in discussions of this sort by the implied idea that as soon as you mention the word “gene” the entire question somehow becomes qualitatively different. That strikes me as an irrational reaction which does not promote clear thinking. Whatever ethical principles we feel the need to adopt with respect to parents trying to control how their kids turn out, those principles if sound should apply now because they’re needed now, and not just in some notional future of genetic manipulation.

“(Funny that Harry says a perfectionist view supports skepticism about genetic enhancement. I would have thought most versions of perfectionism would be enthusiastic.)”

I couldn’t agree more with Tom about that. In fact I just recently finished a paper where I argue for that very position! Loving parents ought to care about ensuring their children are born with opportunities for living flourishing lives. And it is an open question whether biological or environmental manipulation is the best way of securing these aims. Much of course depends on the details (enhancement for what?, etc.). But the same applies to environmental enhancement. I don’t think virtuous parents should rule genetic enhancements out of hand.

Selecting genetic traits is very different from selecting a husband. I would hope that you select a husband out of love, and not solely for his potential to produce intelligent/beautiful/healthy children. Yes that will affect the gene pool, but it’s (I hope!) not why you marry him. There’s a related discussion to what I’m getting at and it has do to with deaf parents who select for deafness in their children (I think it’s via sperm donors, but it’s certainly plausible via genetic selction). That worries me. Yes it’s imparting on them a certain culture that they wouldn’t have access to as a hearing person, but it’s also making a very important decision for them (that would be different if it resulted by chance). That decision is that it’s better to be apart of the deaf culture than not, a choice that is usually not one you can opt out of. Maybe you’re okay with that, but I’m not. So I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree with this one.

A few years ago I heard Nancy Kress talk about biotech vistas, and she said something that sort of rattled me in a good way – it disturbed me and I think it’s both true and important. She commented that when it comes to tinkering with human beings in hopes of improving them, what can be done will be done, by someone rich. We can collectively decide to ban, monitor, or otherwise restrict a technology or its application…and that will work precisely as well as banning performance enhancements in professional sports has. “We won’t do that” is in practical terms not an option for human enhancement, in other words. It will be done if it can, and the rest of us will have to deal with the consequences.

A big contributor factor is of course that once you have actually existing people who’ve been genetically tinkered with, it’s not like we’re going to send them to the dump. They will be living alongside the rest of us. Their enhancements will or won’t work as promised, but we won’t remove them from the population as we would with dangerous animals or defective machinery. Parents with money will inevitably find someone to do the medical work, whether in the First World, at a “medical tourist” hub like Bangkok, or wherever, and when their children are born…then we deal with it.

Kress argued that no medical development appealing to the very wealthy has ever been successfully stamped out. I don’t, at the moment, think of any counter-examples. There’s a big difference between “stamped out” and “made unavailable to those constrained by budget and/or respect for the law”.

Couldn’t you say the same things about education right now? Education makes a hell of a difference to people’s capabilities, and in a global perspective the educational gap between rich and poor is a yawning chasm. Maybe it’s inequality that’s the real problem, not genetics?

“And it is an open question whether biological or environmental manipulation is the best way of securing these aims”.

I should expand a bit on this to show why things are even more complicated than this. Many environmental interventions that parents currently pursue *already* manipulate the biology of their children. The food we feed them, their education, the hobbies we encourage (like sports); all these things alter the biology of our children (for better or worse). So the question raised by genetic enhancement is really: would it be good to pursue yet another form of biological intervention (a more direct intervention)? And everything really depends on the details.

Whatever basis I may have chosen my husband on, that does not stop some other person from choosing their husband or wife solely for his/her potential to produce intelligent/beautiful/healthy children. Nor do my decisions mean that such a thing has never happened in the past.

The deaf people choosing deaf children situation always troubles me. They are limiting those children’s physical abilities, so that those kids can participate in a culture that their parents think is worthwhile. This is making a very important decision for those kids. But how often do the inevitable choices parents make are ones that mean making very important decisions for their kids? How many people born and bred in NY city would really be happier living in a hunter-gatherer tribe in the Amazonian jungle? Or the people born and bred in the Amazonian jungle really be happier living in NY city? But deafness is a physical limitation and were some parent to hit their already-born child so badly as to cause deafness I would have no problem with prosecuting that parent and sending them to jail.

But in the case of what Harry is discussing, we are talking about improving children physically, not introducing physical limitations. So the case of the deaf parents choosing deaf children is rather irrelevant.

1) Sandel is completely aware that genetic or technological interventions are of a kind with many environmental interventions, and thinks that his various analyses help to explain (part of) what is wrong with some of those environmental interventions; and I think he has some success in this. (He has a nice account of what’s wrong with “hyperparenting” and also of what is wrong with steroid use and some non-pharamceutical enhancements in sports).

2) I agree with Colin that parents have a duty to provide opportunities for their children to flourish, and that some genetic interventions may contribute to fulfilling this duty. SO, actually, does Sandel, as I implied, and I expressed a worry about him being able to draw the line where he wants to. But CB’s point in #7 is key here; genetic enhancements once widely in use, like all sorts of other interventions (cosmetic dentistry and costmetic surgery) can open up wasteful positional competitions. Everyone has to do it to keep up. The point some people have made that, in fact, some of the apparance of control is illusory is also signficant here. But I’ll look forward to reading your paper, Colin.

3) Following on from this, Sandel worries that the appearance, and even the reality, of increased mastery over our environment does not, in fact, make us better off. Of course, up to a point it does, which is why we seek it, but beyond a certain point (which its not clear to me where it is) the apparent availability of control draws us into projects of mastery which, actually, leave us no happier and no more fulfilled, and perhaps less so, having, on top of that, wasted resources and effort that could have produced more good used otherwise (eg altruistically).

4) I don’t treally think that perfectionism supports skepticism about genetic enhancement, except indirectly in that it undermines the libertarian assumptions I brought to the table when first thinking about this, and that seem, to me, widespread in the bioethics literature I have read (eg Robertson, Harris, and even to a lesser extent in “From Chance to Choice”). I agree, though, that the way I put it is funny. It would be a bit ironic for Sandel to come out as a perfectionist given the title of the book! But that’s what he is, I think.

5) on tom hurka’s #20. I actually can see something bad about the way that medicine has extended the role of responsibility and diminished that of luck — namely that it has diminished solidarity. All things considered, of course, it was a trade off well worth making — atc, things are much better. Sandel identifies what is or would be bad about the enhancements to which he referes, without actually saying that this would be an atc bad thing (thought he pretty clearly thinks it would). The Glover point you make seems to simply be a case where Sandel has to say, sure that kind of enhancement wouldn’t be bad, or at least wouldn’t be bad on solidairty grounds, even if it would be on non-opennness to the unbidden grounds, and may be an atc improvement and thus justified. Tom — it would take you very little time to read the book, and I’d love to know what you think of it (in fact, as an aside, I have to say that when I read the Cohen paper referred to in my previous post my two thoughts were “this seems really good” and “I wonder what Tom Hurka thinks of it, because if he thinks its old hat it probably is”).

Oh yes — and on IQ, I think that its entirely plausible that making IQs more equal would improve the lives with those with low IQs, at least in ouor social environment or soemthing like it, but also that increased IQ beyond a certain point could be a terrible atc harm for the person it is done to. Who would do the work that people with low IQs now do if we raised the IQs of those with low IQs — why, we would share it more equally, if we really care about it being done, and that would be a good thing, at least for them.

I’m inclined to agree with Neil — the potential of this sort of technology is vastly overrated. From what I understand of genetics, the technology to create children with specific talents, personality traits, etc., is centuries away if not completely impossible.

does anybody know of a case where medical or scientific research has been durably stopped by societal choice?

Are you serious? There’s a huge amount of research that could be done on human subjects if we didn’t care about the risks to them. Leaving aside high-tech stuff, there are also tons of interventions you could make in early childhood to produce specialized adults — eunuchs, anyone? — that are completely ruled out. Look at the research on e.g. perception done with cats and monkeys — imagine how much more we could learn with human subjects!

I think on the question of ‘artificially’ altering people (i.e. using technology/drugs/medicine to produce changes that could not occur simply by say, years of training), there is an intuitive sense of a difference between making people average or ‘normal’ and giving people traits superior to the average. I don’t think anyone worries, for example, if someone wears glasses to gain normal eyesight. And similarly, nobody would oppose cosmetic surgery for those with severe facial disfigurements and few would oppose the chpice of it for people who would be generally considered as unusually ugly. What people are more likely to object to is those who are average looking (or better than that) using cosmetic surgery (or those of near average height using growth hormone etc). The problem with this is that if enough people do it, the ‘normal’ itself is changed. So someone who looks their age at 50, not ten years younger, is seen as substandard.

Abb1 and Harry’s points above illustrate nicely the point Harry mentioned in his previous post about getting the proportions right. Abb1 notes that there are bound to be negative side-effects with any medical intervention. Sure enough. But there are also likely to be harms with not intervening. We recently had our kids receive the flu jab. There were some potential benefits (boost to their immune system) and some potential harms (adverse side-effects). But in this case the harms of non-intervention outweighed the harms of intervention. Our children are more likely to die from influenza then they are from getting the flu jab itself. I think there is a tendency to underestimate the harms of the status quo and that is why people think the benefits of enhancements are trivial.

And Harry’s concern about positional goods is, while interesting, I think disproportionate given the magnitude of the likely benefits at stake in his example. Part of the problem is that talking about enhancing IQ is an example rife with problems. But in the case of increasing our intelligence (broadly understood), even if doing so raises some of the positional goods concerns Harry notes, I think the likely benefits would far outweigh the negatives.

Harry asks “who would do the work that people with low IQ now do?”. I say “Why assume it would be people who do this work”? [Harry does note that he is assuming we are in the same social environment, but why assume that?- especially when intelligence has the potential to transform our social environment in important ways] If the work we are talking about here is work no one really enjoys doing then maybe our future (extra-intelligent society) will be one where we have robots doing these jobs [if you think I’m crazy, just check out last week’s issue of Science which has a special on a robotic future]. Hey, maybe people won’t even need to work (as we now know it) to live a decent life. But even more important are the potential medical breakthroughs we could make. So those with lower IQ have an interest in remaining healthy for a long time. And if enhanced intelligence ushered in labour-saving measures and medical breakthroughs (which seems reasonable) I don’t think they would complain that things have, on balance, made them worse off. So leveling down intelligence doesn’t improve anyone. I think it is even more counterintuitive than the case of leveling-down wealth. And it really underestimates the power intelligence has to improve everyone’s lives.

I think the other commenters are right about Harry’s point, an you are not. He’s making the case “against perfection”, against *something*. He’s not foretelling negative consequences of likely future social developments (though he is doing that). I’m not sure exactly what his case *is* against, but you’re making it out to be against nothing.

I posted a comment about the Cohen paper in the earlier thread. I think it’s a great paper that does just what it says philosophers qua philosophers should/can do, i.e. make explicit a general type of consideration that many people rely on implicitly but that hasn’t ever been explicitly described. So it’s not old hat at all. (I was in Oxford last winter/spring and discussed it with Jerry a fair amount.)

Your comment makes Sandel sound more subtle and sophisticated than first appeared, so OK, I’ll read the book. The condition is that you read what has to be a better account of the value of sport, Bernard Suits’s The Grasshopper (recently reprinted by Broadview Press), which is also one of the most stylistically amazing philosophy books ever written (multilevel loving parody of a Platonic dialogue, laugh-out-loud funny, but also philosophically deep.)

“Solidarity is under ferocious assault by rightwingers, and may well disappear without any new biotechnology developing.”

“And not just from rightwingers but from other social forces.”

This is a discussion both of logic and of values, which is why its assumed by so many that any argument against genetic manipulation that does not include a religious aspect will be weak (as weak as this book’s arguments seem to be)

But the weakness doesn’t originate with atheism but with dualism and a myopic understanding of of what intelligence is and of what we should value. Arguing for restraint from within what is already a monoculture of methodological individualism will inevitably be seen by opponents as self-defeating.
Seeing the individual as constituent rather than constitutive [something liberalism is incapable of doing] changes the color of the debate; once you’ve done that you can make the argument on the basis of moral suasion. Otherwise, you sound like a whiner.

“Solidarity is under ferocious assault by rightwingers…” and from philosophical, that is to say academic, liberalism as well. They defend the idea but deny it any authority.

If Sandel’s child turned out to be nearsighted, would he object to supplying her with eyeglasses? If not, then suppose there was a technology that could identify and correct nearsightedness in the womb. Would he object to using it? What if that technology was a “genetic intervention”? Does he object to prenatal care in general? Would he ban folic acid supplements? I don’t understand the preference for some forms of enhancement over others.

I don’t share his unease; indeed, I find it difficult to comprehend. It reminds me of the weird arguments against antidepressants, insofar as they allegedly deny us some element of our humanity that is associated with depression.

I guess what’s bothering me is that I don’t see why humility is a virtue in the raising of children. Should I refrain from providing my child with the best education suitable to her needs, out of a fear that her intellectual development will be seen as my exercise of responsibility rather than her natural gifts?

Who would do the work that people with low IQs now do if we raised the IQs of those with low IQs – why, we would share it more equally, if we really care about it being done, and that would be a good thing, at least for them.

The Crooked Timber crew moonlighting as hair dressers and bus drivers – now there’s a thought.

Tom Hurka — thanks, its a deal. I noted your comment about Cohen when it appeared with a kind of “oh, so I was right, good” in my head.

tom t — no, Sandel is fine about interventions to restore or achieve something like normal functioning. I don’t know whether he can get a notion of normal functioning he wants to do the work needed, in fact, but he leans on it (and others, eg Norman Daniels, have worked up some sort of notion which, I assume, he is relying on).

I don’t share his unease; indeed, I find it difficult to comprehend. It reminds me of the weird arguments against antidepressants, insofar as they allegedly deny us some element of our humanity that is associated with depression.

I think Sandel would distinguish between correcting genetic errors and creating genetic enhancements. For example, abolishing Tay-Sachs or sickle cell anemia would be great, but giving all children have 145 IQs would be worrisome.

“Who would do the work that people with low IQs now do if we raised the IQs of those with low IQs – why, we would share it more equally, if we really care about it being done, and that would be a good thing, at least for them.”

The Crooked Timber crew moonlighting as hair dressers and bus drivers – now there’s a thought.

You know, it would not have occurred to me that hairdressers and bus drivers have especially low IQs. Novakant, Harry B- I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the woman who cleans your office at night may well be as smart as you.

giving all children have 145 IQs would be worrisome.

The burden of proof is really on those who think such a thing is remotely possible. It’s funny — a couple threads down we have a bunch of very cogent arguments against seeing IQ as something with a simple, environment-independent, easily identified genetic basis. But when the context changes from racism to technology, suddenly we’re all naive hereditarians.

lemuel — the first point is well taken in my case, though I should add that in the 15 years I’ve inhabited I don’t think my office has been cleaned except by me. No-one could accuse my employer of being lavish. The second point; well, in this discussion IQ just stands in for something like marketable talents, which I assume to be a product of genes and environment, and thus in principle influenced by both environmental and genetic interventions.

While the notion of “normal species functioning” enjoys a central role in influential accounts of just healthcare (like Daniels’ account, as Harry notes) I think it is rife with problems and should be discarded. We are, as a species, *intrinsically* vulnerable. And so limiting the demands of justice to restoring normal functioning is problematic.

It is perfecting normal for me, as I age (which is also normal), to become more susceptible to cancer, diabetes, stroke, cognitive decline, impotence, infection, bone fracture, etc., etc. (and the list goes on for a really long time!)

I don’t think there is anything shameful about hoping to improve our fate beyond the state of affairs that our evolutionary history has just happened to bring us to at this moment in human history. Indeed, I take a much stronger stance. I actually think there is a duty of justice to pursue such enhancements.

In this discussion IQ just stands in for something like marketable talents, which I assume to be a product of genes and environment, and thus in principle influenced by both environmental and genetic interventions.

But in the race and intelligence debates, the notion that IQ can be used as a stand-in for talents or intelligence, and that either IQ or general intelligence have simple genetic determinants, have been thoroughly refuted. It just isn’t the case that there are genes for intelligence such that Europeans could have more of them than Africans or that they could be easily subject to genetic manipulation. (And you can’t have one without the other.) And “just assuming” a wildly implausible counterfactual is a really poor way to hone our moral intutions, as we’ve seen before.

You know, it would not have occurred to me that hairdressers and bus drivers have especially low IQs.

Lemuel, please take a look at my first post in this thread and note the disclaimer in parenthesis. That said, I don’t think it’s totally crazy to assume that the average level of intelligence amongst nuclear physicists and professors of philosophy would be slightly higher than that of hairdressers and bus drivers.

My whole point was that there is nothing inherently dismal about having a lower IQ or being a hair dresser, that indeed these groups might possibly even be happier and more content overall than those with higher IQs (abb1 pointed to Ecclesiastes) and that it’s therefore misguided to pity them or wanting to artificially raise their IQ.

widespread availability technological intervention engenders a tendency to see characteristics that once were “given” as matters of someone’s choice.

Possibly, but not really enough to worry about. In fact, both people and (especially) societies have a strong tendency to emphasize the element of choice in those traits they value highly, and to emphasize the “given” element in those traits they value little. For example, American students tend to view academic achievement–especially in mathematics and science–as a matter of innate talent, whereas, say, Chinese students are much more likely to view it as a matter of hard work. Similarly, abstemiousness is something whose lack Americans tend to attribute to an unavoidable “illness”, whereas cultures that really value abstemiousness treat excessive intoxication as a serious moral failure. Conversely, traits highly valued by Americans, such as wealth, happiness, athleticism and physical attractiveness, are treated much more as states achieved through applied effort–regardless of their actual dependency on choice or chance relative to other, less highly valued traits.

Since this relationship between importance and perceived mutability is largely unaffected by actual mutability, it’s highly unlikely that changes in mutability due to, say, developments in genetic technology will affect it either. Think of it this way: if the myriad obvious things Americans could do individually and collectively to improve their mathematical skills don’t keep them from thinking of their own current abysmal level of mathematical ignorance as a matter of lack of inherent talent, then why would the addition of a few genetic techniques to the current menu of more conventional educational ones make any difference?

Sorry, lemuel, I was not being clear enough. I am just using “IQ” as a stand in for that, more fundamental, idea. If IQ has nothing to do with the more fundamental idea, too bad for IQ. Don’t get hung up on my lazy use of language. Do we agree that marketable talents are a product of genes and environment? That’s enough for me.

I don’t think it’s totally crazy to assume that the average level of intelligence amongst nuclear physicists and professors of philosophy would be slightly higher than that of hairdressers and bus drivers.

When I think about all the factors that determine whther a given individual becomes a physicist or a bus driver, it seems to me that innate intelligence is so far down on the list that, no, there is no reason to think it’s higher in the first case than the second. (Assuming it even makes sense to talk about innate intelligence at all.)

On the larger point that if you could produce people with higher IQs they would not necessarily be happier — well, yes, but we don’t live in societies organized around human happiness, do we?

I am just using “IQ” as a stand in for that, more fundamental, idea. If IQ has nothing to do with the more fundamental idea, too bad for IQ. Don’t get hung up on my lazy use of language. Do we agree that marketable talents are a product of genes and environment?

I recall almsot identical language being used by defenders of racial differences in IQ on one of the other threads. There just is not a convenient stand-in for “marketable talent.” It’s not remotely quantifiable.

Look: Saying that, in principle, a “trait” must ahve some genetic basis is not at all the same as showing that the genetic influence is in the form of small, readily identified group, consistent set of genes. If there are “genes for intelligence” such that they could be inserted into an embryo to reliably produce a “smarter” child, by whatever standard, then it would be perfectly reasonable
to ask if those genes are more prevalent in one popualtion than another, and how much of differences in social outcomes that explained. But all serious scinece says that there are not such genes and that it is not reasonable to ask that question.

It’s really not OK to use the exact same assumptions about genetic basis of intelligence as racists do just because it makes for an interesting moral philosophy puzzle.

This is my last word on this, lemuel — I wrote lazily, but in terms that are absolutely standard in these discussions. I could have used a different phrase, and wish I had to avoid this diversion, but there you are. Could genetic intervention be used to increase marketable talent in a particular social environment? If not, then there’s nothing to worry about. If so, then…

Harry, Lemuel is entirely correct. Let’s grant for the sake of argument that IQ works in the way you are taking it. Even so, we can’t just abstract away the mechanisms of how biology actually works, because the human we get is always some very complicated interaction of genes and environment, and the neat dichotomies you want to draw just don’t exist.

As far as I know, there is currently only one known genetic factor that is known to be cause increased IQs. It was discovered just a few weeks ago: some children have a variant of the FADS7 gene that improves how well they metabolize breast milk to produce certain fatty acids which are helpful in brain development. On average, children with this variant gene have an IQ that is 7 points higher than average. (Children without this gene have normal IQs.) (link)

Now, do you think that parents who pass on this variant to their kids should be forbidden from breast-feeding their kids, on the grounds that this raises IQs unfairly? Or do you think they are they morally obliged to breast-feed their children, on the grounds that failing to do so leads to them not flourishing as well as they might?

Note that a) this is the simplest possible test case imaginable, and b) it isn’t possible to disentangle nature and nurture.

(It does, however, lend an awful lot of force to James Heckman’s research program on early childhood interventions which improve learning.)

“The Case Against Perfection”
“Could genetic intervention be used to increase marketable talent in a particular social environment?”

“Perfection…” “Marketable environment”

Once you’ve decided on one unit of measurement, or in this case one unit of value then it’s possible to generalize about perfection. But you’ve already lost the race. There used to be many units of measurement and many ways for people to find ways to occupy themselves that they could consider morally valuable. In the social world of expertise those have all atrophied, and we end up with experts (intellectual aristocrats) defending a democracy they don’t consider themselves a part of.

Perhaps I want to have one very intelligent and dutiful child to look after several average, but complacent, siblings. There would be more total happiness. I suppose two dutiful children would be more successful, but there would be an increased risk of rebellion.

*I* have certainly read SF that was not morally against imprinting children; it seems to me that Cherryh’s Cyteen doesn’t show its average-citizen as unhappy, although the few members of their society who aren’t built-in can be unhappy. There’s even a sympathetic insect race in Serpent’s Reach.

Actually, there’s a lot of literature that believes strongly in imprinting the children, although it’s always imprinting to the current social standard. Maria Edgeworth, say.

innate intelligence is so far down on the list (…) Assuming it even makes sense to talk about innate intelligence at all.

So you are doubting that humans are born with different capabilities and talents, you’re saying that they’re a blank slate at birth and that the difference between Mozart, Wittgenstein, Einstein on the one hand and John Doe on the other is explainable with environmental factors? There must have been some major cold fusion going on in their upbringing, while all the John Does of the world have been growing up in a seriously deprived environment. Come on, this is wrong and you know it.

Well, as Sandel says, “parenthood is a school in humility”. Lacking the ability to write scripts for, or even cast, our children, helps us to accept the role that fortune has played and continues to play in our own lives; it teaches us that we are inevitably limited in our attempts to master the world.

the difference between Mozart… on the one hand and John Doe on the other is explainable with environmental factors? There must have been some major cold fusion going on in their upbringing, while all the John Does of the world have been growing up in a seriously deprived environment.

Well, the fact that of the 6.5 billion people in the world, at least 6.4 billion of them never get the chance to learn the piano in the first place might have something to do with it.

Parenthood teaches humility in that a parents plans will almost never happen as planned (and miraculously, you don’t hate the people who cause this, you love them more and more). But parenthood definitely teaches ambition – I must get X, endure Y, achieve Z for my children’s sake, or even for their whims.

In general, when medicine enables something we find politically horrible, it’s being used within some politically horrible system to make what looks to someone like the best of a bad deal. You want fewer female fetuses aborted, try making life for poor girls in that society less awful. End murder-for-autopsies in med schools by decriminalizing and destigmatizing autopsies. Sandel’s discomfort should be with the society we have, that he believes would warp any advantages to be attained. Surely he isn’t simply worried that (his own) giftedness and success in life is a positional good, meaningless if democratized, is he?

So you are doubting that humans are born with different capabilities and talents, you’re saying that they’re a blank slate at birth and that the difference between Mozart, Wittgenstein, Einstein on the one hand and John Doe on the other is explainable with environmental factors?

EInstein, Mozart? — sure, they were probably born with unusual talents. But that’s not what we were talking about. I think the vast majority of people could become very good physicists or musicians/composers with appropriate training. Look at the Polgar sisters.

I’d guess it has at least a modest effect because it correlates positively with many ( albiet modest) predictors of happiness such as wealth and education. I doubt it’s a strong effect though. A brief search does reveals one study that came up with a negative result on the question but all in all there seems to have been fairly limited study on the topic.

Apparently the Sandel guy feels that innate talents are very important, hense “the key idea is that of giftedness”.

I suppose it’s true that someone born with a decent musical ability is not likely to bother making the effort to develop it further, knowing that someone else can just pop a little pill and immediately start churning out a dozen superb symphonies every week.

Parents throughout the country are being pressured and coerced by schools to give psychiatric drugs to their children. Teachers, school psychologists, and administrators commonly make dire threats about their inability to teach children without medicating them. They sometimes suggest that only medication can stave off a bleak future of delinquency and occupational failure. They even call child protective services to investigate parents for child neglect and they sometimes testify against parents in court. Often the schools recommend particular physicians who favor the use of stimulant drugs to control behavior.

Even if this Dr. Breggin is a crackpot to some extent (I don’t know if he is or he isn’t), still, it’s obvious that these things can become a problem.

I’ve got to say that, as excuses for not embracing our genetically engineered post-human destiny go, this has been pretty thin gruel. Fortunately, it’s being consumed mostly by people who aren’t in a position to do more than impotently whine while the future takes shape without them.

Regarding FADS7 gene variants, there’s some reason for optimism that appropriate supplementation with the proper fatty acids can achieve the same benefits, IF you know in time that you should be doing it. Yet to be established is whether that supplementation has any ill effects if you didn’t need it. Probably not, but I expect we’ll know that shortly.

We’re accumulating an increasing tool box of non-genetic intelligence enhancing interventions. Most of them seem to involve early prenatal nutrition, at a point in pregnancy where the woman doesn’t have a clue yet that she’s pregnant. You’d think this knowledge would be informing public policy; We’re talking things that are a hell of a lot cheaper and more effective than Head Start, after all.

Isn’t raising the bottom of the Bell Curve more important than keeping people from looking at it?

I suppose it’s true that someone born with a decent musical ability is not likely to bother making the effort to develop it further, knowing that someone else can just pop a little pill and immediately start churning out a dozen superb symphonies every week.

Thank you for pointing out the absurdity of this debate. First, the premise is ludicrous. It’s like nutrition. Iodine prevents goiters; vitamin C prevents ricekts; etc. Very effective interventions. But while there are powerful tools to correct deficits, it doesn’t at all follow that there are nutritonal tools to improve performance above the norm, despite a huge amount of mythology in this area. Mutatis mutandis, genes are the same. Easy to correct deficits, essentially impossible to produce supermen. This has to do with the fundamental nature of a biological organism as the nexus of a very large number of weakly determining forces. Sandel et al. need to read some real biology instead of posthumanist cheerleading.

Second, the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise anyway. Chess is essentially a solved problem. Have people stopped playing chess? Far more people exercise today than did a generationa go; is this because fitness is now more a matter of “innate talent” than it was in 1970? Um, no. I’ve recently taken up drawing; at the calsses i go to there’s a real cross-section of people. Photogrpahy and all the computer-assisted techniques out there don’t seem to have any effect on people’s desire to develop this particualr talent. And even if the impossuible occurred,a nd a pill was developed that enhanced people’s innate visual abilities, it’s absurd to think that would stop people from doing the hard work of developing their talents. It’s hard to believe that someone who thinks talent and practice are substitutes rather than complements has ever engaged in any serious creative work.

But the first question is whether these sorts of interventions are remotely likely and the burden of proof is on those who think they are.

Also, Brett is (for once) right to point out hat genetic and and environmental interventions are very often interchangeable. I’m sorry Harry, but it just ain’t the case that there are special genes for “marketable talents” that you can just turn up a ntoch.

Lemuel, perhaps the debate is absurd if you think of it as one about how to shape ethical and legal frameworks for future (impossible) technologies. But if you think of it as a way of revealing present attitudes and of working out our relation to the actual (via thinking about the impossible but not unimaginable), then it is less absurd. Perhaps it is also useful for uncovering what might be thought of as ‘passive prejudices’ ?

Anyhow, I would like to boost my Ecclesiastes with this (from Annie Hall):

Alvy: You look like a really happy couple? Are you?
Woman: Yeah.
Alvy: Yeah? So how to you count for it?
Woman: I am very shallow and empty, and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Man: And I’m exactly the same way.
Alvy: I see. That’s very interesting. So you managed to work out something?
Man: Right!

lemuel — thanks, that’s very helpful. I am v. reluctant to comment on a reconstruction of someone else’s argument on the fly, as it were, and I have v. little time right now. I can say for sure that premisses 1 and 2 need modifying (that is, to capture Sandel’s views), so I’ll think about what is the correct version. Also, your comments and vivian’s (and a private correspondence with Neil #1 above) convince me that I have inadvertantly reperesented Sandel’s argument as being more obsessive about genetic interventions than it is.

I’ll try to figure out exactly how to modify your representation there, and will try to add to thins in the next day or two. Look out for it!

A small sidelight: the way Sandel’s notion of giftedness is being used has shifted over the course of this thread. Abb1, for instance, uses it above as if it meant something to do with being gifted in the sense of having innate talent. I don’t think that can be Sandel’s point (as least on the basis of Harry’s summary – I haven’t read Sandel’s book yet). Isn’t Sandel appealing to Rawls’s idea that how we come out in the natural and social lotteries is outside our control – a matter of luck – and that this has important results for how we should think about ‘our’ characteristics, unfortunate as well as fortunate? The point is that such ‘gifts’ aren’t ours. Sandel’s worry, if I’ve got him right, is that bringing more characteristics out of the realm of luck and under control will give lucky people more excuse for thinking that their luck is actually due to their own merits. It’s a version of Michael Young’s attack on meritocracy:

If [the new elite] believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to do, that their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get … The newcomers can actually believe they have morality on their side. So assured have the elite become that there is almost no block on the rewards they arrogate to themselves.

Abb1 – yes, I’m saying that ‘giftedness’ is a reference to the gratuituous nature of many of our characteristics. Most of the things we luckily or unluckily are, we can take no credit or blame for. This is a major theme in a lot of post-Rawlsian political theory, which is after all Sandel’s background (he made his name with a critique of Rawls on exactly this topic).

I was told by a Dutch friend – who could have been pulling my leg – that if your child is particularly short, his/her teachers (perhaps amongst other agencies) are likely to want to talk to you, to investigate whether there’s a problem at home in terms of nutrition, emotional support, family issues etc etc. IF this is true, there’s clearly a different definition of normality at work than what I’m used to in the UK. Even if it was a peculiar Dutch joke, at the level of theory I don’t know which definition of normalcy is right – is height part of it? beyond what parameters does it become an issue? – and so I suppose that, like Colin, I’m troubled by the idea of a cross-cultural, cross-historical idea of ‘normal functioning.’ I think we see current disagreement, and I expect there to be still more disagreement in the future.

The arguments about how enhancement may undermine humility, responsibility, and solidarity by changing our attitude toward giftedness seem to me strained and unconvincing. Of greater concern is the very real danger that parents will seek enhancements to give their children a competitive edge. Since the capacities that give people a competitive edge are virtually by definition positional, their main effects will be to place pressure on offspring to measure up to their supposed genetic edge and to deepen inequalities and perceptions of inequalities in an extremely reprehensible way. If parents sought to enhance their children’s moral sensibilities, kindness, and capacities to think carefully and show compassion, enhancement would not be disquieting.